Because companies that are loved win

Delight intensives: get inspired, but don’t stop there

One of the best things about attending a conference like Delight is getting the chance to pull back the curtain and see how smart people are changing the game to create experiences people love. You come away with new insight, inspiration and confidence to try new things in your own work. You can do this!

The challenge is that once you’re back at work, old routines and responsibilities rush back in. Your double-booked calendar and too-much-to-do list steal focus and sap momentum. It’s hard to get other team members on board and to win buy-in from your boss and other decision-makers. And there’s always next year… right?

What if you could go into next year with more than good intentions?

What if you could spend a day with your team and peers in other organizations, and learn how to put your new ideas into action? That’s exactly what Delight intensives are designed to do. Whether you attend all three days of the conference or just join us for one day of hands-on learning, you’ll get practical experience and tools to take back to work.

Learn about each of our three Delight intensives below and plan to join us on Wednesday, September 28 at The Nines hotel in Portland, Oregon. We’ll spend a day learning and collaborating, with a chance to compare notes over lunch with a rooftop view. It’s like an off-site retreat that you don’t have to organize!

Radical Collaboration in Healthcare

Join this one-day workshop to work on real problems, gaining deep understanding into people’s needs by using design thinking out in the wild. Healthcare leaders will facilitate a health-specific design challenge using this human-centered process.

By working collaboratively with others from different levels and backgrounds we will identify needs, ideate solutions, and test them with users. You will gain an introduction to, or a deeper understanding of, the design thinking process and the challenge. Prior experience is not necessary but is welcome.

This one-day workshop could lead to future connections and collaborations. This will be fun, fast and insightful. Let’s learn by doing and make something new, together.

Create Better Together: Amplifying Creative Collaboration

A successful team requires more than putting smart people together to generate and execute upon ideas. Most companies focus on the technical skills members bring to a team, but the
most valuable skill is the ability to communicate effectively with one another. A project’s true success is dependent upon the team communicating effectively to creatively collaborate: multiplying each other’s ideas to solve problems.
This workshop provides an approach to help teams work like a well-calibrated machine and produce great work together. Attendees will learn methods for encouraging the flow of ideas, effectively communicate their ideas, develop skills to listen to and encouraging the ideas of others for optimum team productivity and output.
Participants will take a real-world problem and run through a series of ideation exercises to create and execute on an action plan. When these practices are infused into the culture of a company, it creates an environment where team members can more easily collaborate to produce and apply innovations in a meaningful and permanent way for themselves, their team, and their entire organization.

Attendees will learn:

Methods for getting creatively unstuck

Tools to become an active listener and stimulate the flow of ideas

Techniques to improve structure and manage communication within a team

A process for approaching creative problem-solving and collaborating with a playful, fun attitude

Practices for suspending judgment to accept all offers in order to collaborate with teammates’ ideas

How to encourage and leverage the aggregate genius of a team

To reinforce the concepts from this highly experiential hands-on workshop, you’ll also take part in both individual and group in-class exercises with real-world applications, and take away at-home practice activities and curated resources for further learning.

DX Strategy Master Class

Within every organization there are individuals who desire change. Are you one of them?

We’ve seen how our world is in constant change around us, yet in many cases our own organizations are not keeping pace with technology advances and new methods of service design and delivery. But change isn’t easy. This class will arm you with tools and frameworks to disrupt the status quo, accelerate change, and set the stage for sustainable digital success.

You’ll learn why the best digital strategy starts with experience and how a digital experience (DX) strategy can help transform your organization.

Part I: Build organizational alignment on the competencies needed to thrive in the digital age—and to surface the gaps and barriers keeping your organization from making progress.

Part II: Gain executive buy-in on digital programs by connecting them to your organization’s strategic initiatives. And create a business case that shows how improving your customer’s digital experience will generate revenue while building your organization’s reputation and capabilities.

Part III: Socialize a digital vision that aims to imagine new experiences customers will have in the future—and to use the values of an organization to effect change.

With these tools you’ll be able to help your organization contextualize, synthesize and visualize the road ahead. You’ll be more connected across your organization. And you’ll be empowered to lead the charge to change.

Before you get here

The single most effective tool to effect change is understanding your organization’s values. Knowing what makes your organization tick, how it makes decisions, and where it stands firm can help reinforce the new habits you want to take hold. Bring your passion for digital and other prerequisites that will help you embrace what you learn:

Come with a desire to change the status quo—to disrupt yourselves and your peers.

Want your organization to have a customer-centric vision—to be obsessed about making better experiences.

Enjoy being hands-on with technology and marketing—to test, tinker and experiment with new tools and ideas.

About the Author

An award-winning content strategist and B2B marketing leader, Carmen brings together big ideas, strategic thinking and hard-earned empathy for the challenges today’s marketers face. In a career spanning two decades, she has worked as a TV journalist, copywriter, content strategist and marketing director. As Content Director at Babcock & Jenkins, Carmen built an award-winning content marketing practice, working with global clients including Adobe, Google and Xerox. More recently, she led the marketing team at Connective DX and helped organize the Delight Conference. She is now owner and principal strategist at Chill Content, a consultancy focused on content strategy and storytelling.

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Delight is hosted by the team at Connective DX, where we design and build great digital experiences. We enable our clients to see their business from the outside in, and we build that insight into the systems we develop and stories we tell. We serve clients globally from our offices in Portland, OR and Boston, MA. We’re digital specialists, working at the intersection of strategy, design, technology, and digital enablement. Founded in 1997 we've been lucky to partner with great organizations such as Columbia Sportswear, OHSU, Harvard University and many more.